Kid Icarus

Yeah...?

They were talking about Football vocabulary on JLA this week. They got it absolutely spot on imo. If you say things like 'know ball' (or imo also if you refer to a transfer as a 'pickup', or say things like 'nostalgia merchant') then rightly or wrongly I automatically have no interest in anything you have to say about football

I can't get my head around the appeal of doing a draw simulator like

I honestly just think they needed a talking point from the weekend and shoehorned that in. It really should have been about Arsenal scoring after Saka had fouled and injured that Fulham player imo. You have to love the Carragher argument though, it's essentially 'well we don't know if it was a goalscoring opportunity because VVD fouled him before we knew for sure' As Jack Nicholson put it in As Good as it Gets, "I'm drowning here, and you're describing the water"

I'm generalising a bit but I think UK football fans can largely be taken for granted because they'll either keep going, be replaced by someone else, or priced out. I don't think for a second that it would be any different if US football fans were in that same position.

An American did this though

Only player that shouldn't be there is Ramsdale, who is an overrated fraud. Should be Allison, Pope or Raya ahead of him.

Exceptions to the rule aside, football owners really are all absolute scum like.

Get a podcast you two ?

Just checked. 5 posts vs 15 and counting. Not being the post police or owt obviously, just saying that the theory probably holds up.

I would highly recommend against taking the views of fans on social media as representative of anything. Surely this is a lesson that should have been learned a long time ago? The Twitter football fan (NUFC or other) isn't a fan in the traditional sense, they're stereotypically entitled, whiny dickheads who prefer the 'winning' of spending money in the transfer market and the 'winning' of goading other fans over the traditional notion of winning where you enjoy watching your team win football matches.

Shades of the same conflated point that we saw all the time when Rafa was here - that people criticising an argument is somehow the same as them saying you're not allowed to make the argument at all. It's all a bit 'Im entitled to my opinion' really. If people were saying 'you shouldn't post this' fair enough, but if they're saying 'what you've posted is shit and here's why' that's totally different.

It again comes back to player quality. The best players aren't just the best, they're experienced in high pressure situations. It's what made Liverpool a huge threat last season when we were chasing top 4 - despite them being shit they'd been there and done that and were battle hardened. They then went on a huge winning run than could have been enough to pip us to the top 4 had Howe and the team slipped up under that pressure. And on top of that we were also undoubtedly better than Man United last season imo and we were better in the cup final, but experience counts. Look at this comparison before the final. This is just the players, it's not hard to see which team has the advantage mentally in this situation, regardless of who might be better when there's less pressure on. If Howe ever has a team with the experience that teams like Man United's had (on top of the quality we already have) and is still not cutting it against the teams that do have that experience, that's when a think a point can be reasonably made about his quality as a manager. Until then I don't think there's a point to be made at all, not only are we punching above our weight, we're doing it with players who don't yet have the experience of what it takes mentally to get the job done. For a lot of teams that's a huge hurdle to get over on their way to success.

For me there was very little wrong with the subs tbh. Gordon was tiring, Isak was ineffective for some reason, and both Bruno and Tonali were starting to misplace passes - so choosing Tonali as the player to come off out of those 2 is justifiable. Wilson makes sense, Barnes definitely makes sense if you're looking for someone to get in behind, and Longstaff makes sense if you want someone making the 3rd run. It's the approach to the match after the sending off that I can't get my head around really. I get that we didn't want to go hell for leather with the threat of Liverpool on the break, but we very noticably reined it in, slowed things down, and attacked more speculatively rather than with real purpose after VVD went off, which seemed counterintuitive. Obviously we had chances and I've read some people saying it was not taking those chances when they thought it was an ominous sign, which makes complete sense. For me though it was when we were just knocking it about between defence and midfield without any real purpose, the sort of thing when you're controlling the game at 3 nil, that it felt off for me. It's why I don't think there's any real use in pointing fingers at Botman, Bruno, Burn, or the subs, because the approach wasn't right and it was obvious that at some point Liverpool would create a chance or chances, no matter what, which is why we needed to kill the game rather than control it. Jota and Nunez coming on just heightened that inevitability further.

Spending half of the Harry Kane money on one player is mad enough, but one as unproven as him is genius/insanity territory

70 million for one good half season where he was a relentlessly dirty cunt who should have about 4 more reds than he got Bargain

Mad how just switching the placement makes them very distinctly Newcastle or Juventus. That would be okay. Very safe and boring but better than them fucking it up.

Very crude photopea edits on my phone

Why?

Also, this is quite good in a 'chin up' sort of way with it coming from a neutral. Basically saying that yes we got things wrong and maybe had a bit of social loafing going on, but that we played well and that the sending off forced Liverpool to play better and in the way they should have from the start. He has Botman and Schär the wrong way around, which analysts seem to love doing for some reason, but I'll let him off.

I really wish there was more football on today so I could just move on like. I'm proper moping at the moment, might make a roast just because

It's only the 3rd time the opposition has gone down to 10 men with the match balanced and any significant time left and the first time we haven't gone on to win.

Of course, that was the next logical step for that upward failure

We've lost from winning positions 4 times in the league under Howe. 3 of them were against Liverpool and of those we should have won 2. 1 was a robbery, and 1 we threw away. It's ridiculous how much they seem to buck their own form and ours to beat us. They're well overdue the sort of battering we've dished out to most other teams and it 100% should have been yesterday.